


Sailing Further Away

by hypothetical_otters



Category: The one and only Herb McGwyer plays Wallis Island
Genre: Angst, M/M, imagined future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-09 04:33:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4334024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypothetical_otters/pseuds/hypothetical_otters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thinking about what could have happened isn't healthy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sailing Further Away

**Author's Note:**

> not mine, belongs to Tom Basden Tim Key and James Griffiths. The film can be seen here- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z05-AcF8X0  
> The title is a quote from a Grace Petrie song 'I'm Not Going Down With Your Ship' and that also is not mine.

On a different day he might have turned the boat around and gone back to Wallis Island. He might have gone back when he found those apples and said something. But he didn’t. He carried on sailing back to the mainland and thought about potential futures. Potential futures involving him and Charles hiding on an island miles from anyone else. Just them hidden away from everyone, carving themselves a life in the cliffs of an island.

He wrote a song; Sixty Pounds and Three Apples. He wrote and rewrote it. Trying to make it sound perfect. Trying to fit all his thoughts and feelings into one burst of sound lasting only one hundred and ninety eight seconds. He doesn’t know if he achieved that. Oh, he knows his record company likes it, he knows that he thinks it sounds good, and he knows his fans like it. He just doesn’t know if it’s perfect. If the man he wrote it for understands. He won’t know unless he goes back to the island. But that was a one off. A one off show for an elusive millionaire fan. He won’t go back.

Maybe Charles will appear at a show. But Herb couldn’t ask Charles in a show, not with fans around them listening to every word he says. Not with fans analysing every word he says. He isn’t thinking of Charles as a fan. Intellectually he knows that Charles is a fan, his biggest fan even, but that weekend didn’t feel like an interaction with a fan. Not entirely. Once they stopped being quite so awkward around each other it felt like they were friends. But he wouldn’t talk about anything quite like that around other fans. So he acts like he didn’t spend nights in Charles’ spare room when Herb sees Charles in all the crowds on his next tour. 

He wouldn’t want to just turn up at Wallis Island again. Charles probably wouldn’t want to talk to him; not after Herb ignored him at all those shows, all those shows where Herb talked to Charles like he was any other fan. Herb doesn’t want to just turn up at Charles’ island just to be turned away. He’s sure that any conversation they had there would be awkward. Herb isn’t good at relationships; look at the wedding he tried to have, he changed his mind daily, put the wedding off so much that his fiancé got fed up with him and left. He wouldn’t know what to say to Charles, he’d ask what Charles thought of the song, but never explicitly say anything, just make hints. He’d leave the island no closer to an answer or any sort of resolution. 

They could have had something, if only Herb wasn’t so paranoid as to say nothing. Wasn’t so paranoid as to second guess his feelings and his interaction with Charles. To second guess Charles motives as to the intimate show. If they met under different circumstances, where Herb was a second rate musician playing in a corner of a pub and Charles talked to him, maybe they could have had something. But instead Charles knows him as a famous guitar toting musician from that advert, and Herb knows Charles as a dedicated fan. Herb knows that any relationship between them wouldn’t work.


End file.
